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THE WINDSOR CHAIRMAKER Newsletter of the Windsor Workshop January 1/00

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THE WINDSOR CHAIRMAKER Newsletter of the Windsor Workshop January 1/00 THE WINDSOR CHAIRMAKER Newsletter of The Windsor Workshop January 1/00 My thanks to so many of you who sent goodwill messages after receiving my last newsletter where I gave details of my heart problems over last winter. I am pleased to report that The Windsor Workshop is back operating at full stretch and I have already run 4 courses since mid-February, with lots more scheduled for the rest of the year. I have decided that enforced time-out from a routine is not all bad! It has certainly given me the opportunity to develop new ideas and reassess my chairmaking priorities and the results will gradually emerge over the next year or so. In a couple of weeks I will be attending the Bodger’s Ball (AGM of the Association of Pole Lathe Turners (APT)) and I hope to finally get around to making my own pole lathe shortly afterwards. There is no chance that I will be offering pole-lathing on my courses in the foreseeable future, but I feel the need to become proficient in this as- pect of traditional chairmaking. Similarly I hope to make some ladderback chairs over the summer using some of the techniques that I have developed for making Wind- sors. Watch out for new-shaped spokeshaves in the next few months though the travisher will remain unchanged. Interestingly the majority of sales of these tools are currently from the USA – the power of the internet to make this possible continues to amaze me! I wish you a good summer. The current amazing weather can surely not continue for ever and I hope that we will receive some rain soon otherwise southern England will resemble southern Europe before too long! James Mursell Win a FREE course! Visit the Classic Hand Tools website www.classichandtools.com and enter their competition for the opportunity to win a 4-day chairmaking course at The Windsor Workshop. Answer just five simple questions (you’ll find the answers by browsing through www.thewindsorworkshop.co.uk) for an excellent chance of winning. Don’t put off booking a course in the hope of winning the competition! If you have already booked and then win, I’ll refund your deposit and there’ll be nothing to pay. www.thewindsorworkshop.co.uk An Amazing Windsor Chair! Over the past few months I have had the pleasure of working with Katie Walker, furniture designer, on her new rocking chair. Katie lives locally and works extensively with Roger Smith. I visit Roger’s work- shop regularly to thickness and join seat wood for courses and to prepare blanks for my tools. Through conversations about Wind- sor chairs Katie decided that she would like to make a Windsor ver- sion of her iconic ‘Ribbon Rocking Chair’. Not having acted as a ‘consultant’ before it was great fun to encourage her in this venture and to be able to demonstrate the techniques involved in making the new chair, such as measuring the spindle angles, shaping the seat + spindles and drilling all the holes. Roger took on the steam bending of the bow using the former from the previous chair and settling for four sec- tions joined togeth- er to make the complete bow. The Ribbon Rocking Chair The new chair is currently in the Saatchi gallery in London and Katie hopes to get into small production runs. I look forward to producing many of the compo- nents for her. Shortly after the first chair was finished, I sat down with Katie and she told me a little about her background9 Katie explained that the underlying philosophy of her furniture is that ‘the structure is the form’. She dislikes added ornamentation as it is the fundamental structure that interests her. Drilling the Bow Roger Smith, Katie Walker, James Mursell 1 Katie was interested in woodworking from her school days and after school took a one year foundation arts course before enrolling in the Furniture and Product Design course at Ravensbourne. Subsequently she spent 2 years at the Royal College of Art studying furniture receiving her first commission in 0882. Katie believes that ‘chairs are the ultimate pieces of furniture as they are so difficult to make really well’. She pointed out that making ‘one-off’ pieces is very expensive and it is difficult to achieve the necessary price from the final design – a sentiment that I completely agree with! Her first rocking chair was unique. She explained that she knew that she wanted to design a rocker, but didn’t know the form, other than that she wanted the frame to be continuous and to flow. Inspiration came from endless studying of other chairs, sculpture and nature – she is fascinated by the patterns and geometry in the growth of plants and animals. With the structure of the frame decided on, the question then became how to make it. In the end she and Roger Smith settled on an industrial bandsaw blade as the ideal former for laminat- ing. This proved a great success with just a single joint in the complete band. ‘Weight and See’ I asked about the design process and she explained that ‘I usually have to work hard to produce a design, though occasionally it just clicks into place. However I am al- ways a little worried if it is not a struggle – I need a little torture in the process!’ The ribbon-rocker was a great success, winning several awards, but with its high price sold few examples. The new Windsor rocker is considerably less expensive to make and it is hoped that not only will it be well received artistically but will also become a commercial success. First shown at Collect, 5 – 8 May 1/00 at the Saatchi Gallery, London www.katiewalkerfurniture.com Jack Goodchild Chairs Last December I received an email asking if I might know anybody who would be inter- ested in a couple of chairs made by Jack (‘last of the bodgers’) Goodchild. I telephoned to find out a little more about the chairs with the intention of making a few sugges- tions, but as the conversation continued I began to consider buying them myself. By the end of the call I had made an offer which was accepted. I am now the proud owner of a full-size chair and apprentice piece made by Jack Goodchild. 2 If you are not familiar with the name already, Jack’s life and work was recorded in some detail and many photos of him and his workshop can be found in books about English Windsor chairs. Carole Leatherhead wrote the following to accompany the chairs9 “My father, Ron Payne, was given the Windsor chair by his Uncle Jack’s widow – Uncle Jack being Jack Goodchild, the Naphill ‘Bodger’. Uncle Jack used to make the chairs in the barn in the orchard at the back of the cottage in Naphill where they lived and I can remember playing there as a child. The smell of sawdust still evokes memo- ries of that barn to this day. The old cottage had no ‘mod cons’ and Auntie Liz, Jack’s wife, used to draw water from a well in the lawn of the garden, which was surrounded by real country garden flowers such as hollyhocks, delphiniums and roses. I was born just around the corner in Louches Lane, so after we moved, my mother and father still visited Auntie Liz at the cottage and after she had to move to another house in the vil- lage, right up until her death in 0861. My father died in 1//5, so I have now inherited ‘the’ chair and its apprentice piece and, although loathe to part with them, I am happy in the knowledge that they will be finding a home where they will be not only be properly cared for, but appreciated by others for the works of art which they are.” These two chairs are now admired by every person that comes on a chairmaking course at The Windsor Workshop. They are the first Windsors that I have ever bought, apart from two (very uncomfortable) eastern European kitchen versions and that was years before I made my first chair! 3 Keith Lane, who attended a course at The Windsor Workshop last year and who owns a Jack Good- child chair of his own, recently sent me some photos of chairs made by Jack’s brother Sidney. These are ‘gothic’ Wind- sors with their character- istically pointed bows. The photos were taken in Naphill, the village where Jack lived. Tools I recently bought some fabulous tools from Glen Rundell in Australia. He has worked with Curtis Buchannan from the US who favours tapered joints in his Windsors and Glen has produced these tools from Australian hardwoods. Glen wrote9 The tenoners ( not an ideal name but at least we know what we mean! ) are a copy of the tools we used in Tennessee, where we learnt to make the continuous arm chair from Curtis Buchanan, who is without doubt one of America's finest. I have seen similar tools for sale on the Classic Hand Tools site in the U.K., the only difference being the shape and perhaps the angle of tenon. Cur- tis explained to us that he uses 5 degree tenons as it allows for small- er dimensioned parts, legs etc and therefore a more refined or delicate looking chair. There are still several makers in the US who use 00 or 01 degrees but their chair parts and therefore their chairs have a much heavier look. When teaching I use the analogy of a 34 degree mortise and tenon in comparison to say a 1 degree.
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